MechWarrior 4: FASA’s Final Answer

This all brings us up to the latest ‘Mech simulation: FASA Interactive and Microsoft’s MechWarrior 4. It has several departures from the previous titles in the series, but, at its core, very little has changed since MechWarrior 2. As can be expected, the graphics engine has slightly improved since MW3 – the terrain and ambient objects are more varied, and the ‘Mechs themselves are more detailed. The player takes on the part of a young Federated Suns noble, who has returned from his battles against the Clans to find his Kingdom trashed by vindictive Steiner forces. The main campaign consists of around twenty missions, all linear. Unlike Mercenaries, there are no randomly-generated “side quests”, and the player must complete a mission in the campaign before moving on to the next. Salvage is fixed in each mission, a step back from Mercenaries. Damage is also magically fixed between missions. Finally, there is an instant action option (missing in StarSiege!) and a multiplayer option played via Microsoft’s Zone.

There are several changes in MW4 that can be considered positive. Each is relatively minor, but definitely change the nature of play as compared to the previous games. First, the weapons have been tweaked downwards – they do less cumulative damage, and energy weapons have a longer “recycle” time. The recycle time on energy weapons also makes heat management less of a factor – only ‘Mechs firing multiple large energy weapons all at once will experience heat problems. This tends to drag fights out at length, compared to the relatively lethal environment of earlier MechWarrior iterations. Another very significant weapon tweak involves locking on with LRMs. Long-range missiles in MW2 and MW3 ruled the battlefield. They are still powerful in MW4, but lock-on constraints have been severely tightened. Players will find themselves using slug-throwers more and more often in close-in dogfights – which, unfortunately, again tend to degenerate into circle-of-death contests.

‘Mech building has been changed for the good, and the bad. On the positive side, ‘Mechs are no longer simple “weapons boxes”, where the player can load any combination of weapons he chooses on a ‘Mech. Keeping in the spirit with the paper-and-pencil Battletech rules, ‘Mechs weapon spaces are divided into “pods”, and each pod can only contain a particular weapon type. For example, the Catapult, a long-range support ‘Mech, has two missile pods and three energy pods – resulting in a ‘Mech that cannot carry slug-throwers at all. This change definitely balances different ‘Mech chassis nicely – players cannot simply run around the game using only one ‘Mech for every situation. (In MW3, example, once a player had acquired a Mad Cat, there was absolutely no reason to pilot another ‘Mech.) The downside is that ‘Mech building, beyond weapon placement, feels very generic now. In the earlier games, a player lovingly placed every component in a ‘Mech. In MW4, most of this is already done for the player. As a result, damage tracking in the game also feels nebulous – while it’s obvious when weapons have been blasted off, there is no way of knowing if your heat sinks have been trashed (for example).

Jumping is another change. Earlier MechWarrior games turned jump jets into hovercraft skirts. In MW4, jump jets propel you straight up – if one wants to jump forward, one has to be running forward first. The jumping rules now properly take “Death From Above” rules into account, although DFA attacks are mainly “by guess and by God” affairs unless the player is using an external view.

FASA acknowledged the “legging” problem seen in MW3, but they went to far in fixing it. Legs seem to be impossible to blow off. Severe leg damage seems to only result in massive mobility problems, but I have yet to see a ‘Mech fall over from leg damage – or any other reason, for that matter.

In summary, the biggest point about MW4 is how very little has changed from previous designs. The A.I. is more competent than the drones in MW3, the graphics are better, and the campaign missions somewhat more varied than the usual seek-and-destroy, but frankly there is very little new here.